I’m glad I didn’t read Michelle Zauner’s New Yorker essay “Crying in H Mart” when it was published in 2018. 

I’m glad I didn’t read her bestselling memoir of the same name, which came out in 2021, until this year. 

I wasn’t ready for it. 

First, a little backstory: The 33-year-old founder of the band Japanese Breakfast, who is in Austin this week for the Austin City Limits Musical Festival, came onto my radar as a musician when I first heard her music on local radio stations about three or four years ago.

I didn’t realize she was a serious writer until her memoir about how food helped her grieve her mother’s death was published to rave reviews just as I was leaving the Statesman last year. The “H Mart” in the book’s title is a popular Korean supermarket that has grown quickly in the past decade.

In another timeline, I would have reviewed her book for the paper. In another timeline, I wouldn’t know anything about what she was writing about. 

But in this timeline, I do.